The moment Elsa’s finished her bottle I look at the clock: bang on seven o’clock. I am so on schedule!

‘Time for bed!’ I say.

‘Na!’ She shakes her head.

‘Yes,’ I say, nodding.

‘NA!’ she screams, then, like a bar of soap in the bath, she slips out of my hands, off the sofa and crawls across the living room. Elsa can walk, but when she wants to move really fast, she reverts to crawling because she’s awesome at it.

Three seconds later, she’s disappeared into the kitchen.

With a sigh, I put down my book and haul myself off the sofa. ‘I’m coming to get you!’ I call out and I hear Elsa squeal with delight followed by a bang and a clatter.

What is she up to?

I walk into the kitchen expecting to see the bin or Pongo’s bowl tipped over, but what I actually see is nothing.

Elsa has vanished.

‘Elsa?’ I call.

Pongo trots in and starts sniffing his way round the room. I look behind the door. Pongo looks under the table. She’s nowhere to be seen.

‘Elsa!’ I shout again, louder this time.

Then I hear a muffled ‘Da!’ coming from one of the cupboards. Straight away, Pongo shoots to the corner cupboard and starts tapping at the door with his paw. I pull it open – and there she is, curled up behind the carrousel thingy that’s full of herbs and baking things.

‘How did you get round there?’ I say. ‘Come on. You need to get out.’ I reach towards her, but she just laughs and wriggles wildly from side to side, trying to get away from me. The clock on the cooker tells me it’s five past seven. I haven’t got time for this. I’m supposed to be doing my IT homework! I get my hands under her armpits (more squealing) and pull her forward, knocking over a bag of sugar. Immediately, Pongo sticks his nose into the cupboard and starts licking it up. I push him out of the way and pull Elsa again, this time even harder.

‘Na, na!’ she says, shaking her head.

I sit back and look at her surrounded by bags of flour and pots of cinnamon and oregano. ‘Looks like you’re stuck, Elsa.’

Her face crumples and she starts to cry.

‘Don’t cry. You’re the one who got in there and did all that wriggling!’

She reaches out her arms to me, and with a sigh I start to take everything out of the cupboard. Soon jars, packets and bottles are piled up around me. Pongo is loving it, and Elsa has calmed down now that she’s found a bag of raisins.

When everything’s out of the cupboard, I can see that the trailing foot of Elsa’s Babygro is stuck in the carousel mechanism. After pulling it and twisting in every direction, I have to accept that it’s not coming out. So I do the only thing my tired brain can think of: I get a pair of scissors and cut the foot off the Babygro. ‘No sudden movements,’ I tell Elsa as the scissors go snip, snip, snip.